MrSeb writes: "Last week, AMD’s Rick Bergman announced his departure as the head of the company’s Products Group. Bergman first joined AMD in 2006, after the ATI acquisition, and had risen to his former position in the aftermath of Hector Ruiz’s resignation in 2009. AMD has said nothing about the reasons for Bergman’s departure. In January, AMD’s Board of Directors canned Dirk Meyer over alleged disagreements on the company’s future mobile products. The move was controversial; Meyer is generally credited with putting the company back on track and successfully executing the Brazos/Llano/Bulldozer roadmap that’s helping AMD return to competitive standing vis-à-vis Intel. In February, Bob Rivet (executive VP, chief operations and strategic officer) and Marty Seyer (senior VP of corporate strategy) were both fired. Bergman was the last remnant of AMD’s old guard and the last executive drawn from within the company’s own ranks. Chekib Akrout and Nigel Dessau are more-or-less tied for the record of longest-serving AMD executive — both joined the company in 2008. The point here is not to cast aspersions on any of AMD’s current executives, but to acknowledge the end of an era and a potentially disastrous change in company focus.

AMD’s current crop of executives are drawn from mobile companies or were focused on mobile product within other companies, nearly without exception. It’s possible that this will turn out to be a tremendous long-term strength. “Possible,” however, is not a synonym for “likely.” AMD’s increasingly visible mobile focus may be timely, but the company is in no shape to go charging off in a new direction."